(Wanna assume total K millenia? Take the K-th root 1.023, or roughly divide 2.3% by K.)

That's still exponential growth ... since from at the very latest the second diaspora from Africa (as its conceivable that the first diaspora along the southern Asian coasts to Australia was more or less linear growth).

Its not logistic growth if keeps on growing at a growing rate. Since, evidently, logistic growth at a ceiling population that falls short of the population to fill up Africa, Eurasia and the Americas at a hunter gatherer density would have left big chunks of one or more continents empty of humans ... as we see big chunks of multiple continents empty of pretty much any other single species of primate.

Its not logistic growth with a ceiling at hunter gatherer densities worldwide if the growth continues to lead to population densities that require the additional work of settled agriculture.

Discussing how many doublings its been since what some evidence, including genetic evidence, suggests was passage through a demographic bottleneck in southern Africa is not disputing whether or not its exponential growth ... its only about estimating the exponential rate.

As far as demographic transition ... I deliberately phrased it as a potential, rather than a certainty. Its hard to sit writing in Beijing, now at twice the population of my home state of Ohio and still growing, and take it as a certainty.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

10,000 BC - 6 millions
400 BC - 153 millions
0 - 252 millions
200 - 257
600 - 208 (Justinian plague)
1000 - 253
1200 - 400
1340 - 442
1400 - 375 (Black plague)
1500 - 461
1600 - 578
1700 - 680
1750 - 771
1800 - 954
1850 - 1241
1900 - 1634
1950 - 2520
2000 - 6236

das monde:

Perhaps most populations were growing at >1% rate most of the time

Looks that way, yes.

das monde:

but the "exceptional" setbacks are parts of the game, and their probability increases with the population number approaching habitat limitations

But it is not planned or genetic.